“You’ll not give it up to him unless he pays you for it,” she reiterated, ignoring her own prospect of trouble. “It’s valuable, or he wouldn’t be so anxious to get it.”
“Perhaps,” Slavens assented.
“I’m going to leave here,” she hurriedly pursued. “It was foolish of me to come, in the first place. The vastness of it bewildered me, and ‘the lonesomeness,’ as Smith calls it, is settling in my heart.”
“Well, where will you go?” he asked bewilderedly.
“Somewhere–to some village or little farm, where we can raise poultry, mother and I.”
“But I haven’t planned it that way,” Slavens smiled. “If you leave, what am I going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she acknowledged, “unless–unless you come some time.”
“Look here, Agnes,” said he, taking the matter entirely in hand. “When we leave this place, we’ll leave together. I’ve arranged that all in my mind and intention. It’s all disposed of and settled. Here comes Boyle now, I think.”
Boyle left his horse standing a few rods distant and came over to where they sat.
“You look comfortable,” he commented, as serene and unperturbed as if the load of one more human life on his soul were a matter too light to be felt with inconvenience. 265